


Twist in the Road

by Temaris



Category: The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-23
Updated: 2010-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:35:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Temaris/pseuds/Temaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buri chooses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twist in the Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mistresscarlett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistresscarlett/gifts).



Buriram Tourakom rolled over, abruptly wide awake. Something moved through the inn, almost, but not quite, noiseless. Not quiet enough. Buri's hands went to her weapons, a pair of knives, and she lay utterly still, her breathing calm and easy as though she slept.

A door, a gust of cold, cold wind, and the door creaked shut again.

"Buri?" Thayet murmured softly, sounding more asleep than awake. "Go to sleep."

"I heard something--"

"It's nothing. It's only the Lioness," Thayet said easily. "Chitral called her, and she's gone to meet him."

"What?" Buri sat bolt upright in her bed. "We should help." Buri swung her legs out of bed and Thayet stopped her with a raised hand.

"You heard the Doi," she said firmly. "Alanna's destiny lies up on the mountain. We can't stop her, and we can't help."

Buri frowned. "I don't believe in destiny. We make our own road."

Thayet shook her head. "Well, then, perhaps I should just say that I would rather you were by my side than braving the ice and snow for the Dominion Jewel, and be done."

"She'll need help--"

"She'll have it," Thayet sounded like she was pretty much asleep again. "Wake me in the morning."

Buri didn't sleep, she couldn't. The windows were shuttered and she knew better than to let the warmth of the inn out into the night, but she dressed swiftly and settled beside the fire, a blanket over her shoulders waiting to see if the Lioness came back.

Hours passed. The inn began to stir, the youngest and least of the servants creeping around to lay the fires and start pumping water, rubbing her eyes and yawning with every step. She nearly tripped over Buri, startling them both, and apologized profusely, despite Buri's attempts to silence her.

Thayet woke, staring up at the ceiling without speaking. The storm blew harder, gusts rattling the shutters and sending icy tendrils through the inn. Buri shivered and met Thayet's eyes. Thayet tried a small smile, and Buri grimaced back. They didn't need words after all these months.

"I'll get some breakfast," Buri said, more for something to do than anything else. The kitchen maid chased her out of the kitchen but not before she'd managed to get some porridge and a hunk of sausage. They shared the bowl, and Buri deftly sliced the sausage with one of her throwing knives.

The peace was broken utterly by a roar of rage from the Shang Dragon. Alanna's little black cat appeared looking as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, and Liam pounded down the stairs seconds later, missing the cat entirely.

"Where is she?" he demanded. Thayet raised an eyebrow at him, and he scowled. "Where the hell is she, _your Highness_." Thayet reddened a little, but Buri was pretty sure she was the only one to realize it.

"She left early, very early," Buri told him, and met his angry look with a forthright look of her own. "Mi-Chi said--"

"I know what she said, what the hell was she thinking! We could have gone together, she should have waited the storm out--"

"Old Chitral wasn't going to let that happen," Thayet said coolly. "Her cat isn't troubled--" Faithful was curled up on a chair near the fire "--and neither should you be."

"The hell with that, that damn cat used magic on me, I never would have slept through her leaving like that," Liam growled, and strode back up the stairs to his room. When he came down he was bundled up so tightly that he barely fit through the doors. "I'm going after her, and if that, that magicking cat-thing tries anything else, I'll drop him off the side of the mountain."

Faithful twitched one ear derisively. Liam gave one last glare before he left, cold air gusting viciously through the inn for a second time.

\------------

The days that followed were dreadful. Liam struggling back through the snow, the Lioness in his arms, the two of them white with cold. Alanna was so frozen when they hurried her into a warmed bed that the long cut across her breast hadn't bled, the white edges curled away from each other and starting to blacken.

The inn’s healer came. She warmed the Lioness slowly, forced hot liquids down their throats, insisted that warm bricks and bowls of steaming water were kept renewed and plentiful. The innkeep and his staff kept whatever thoughts they had about this to themselves, but the place was somber and quiet until the moment two days later when Mi Chi came downstairs and pulled on her shawl and snowshoes.

After that, a different kind of quiet lingered. The Innkeeper seemed gleeful, the staff awed. And Thayet and Coram seemed wary. Buri understood better when Alanna was well enough to get out of bed and promptly offered the Dominion Jewel to Thayet.

For a moment she wanted Thayet to take it. To go back and show Sarain just how much of a Queen and ruler a jian Wilima could be. Defeat Zhir Anduo and change their homeland. But even as the fantasy built itself it crumbled. Thayet was right: women could not be rulers there. Forcing Sarain to submit to the Dominion Jewel would change nothing, would make the civil war and rebellions worse, augmented by magic and hate. No. Better to leave altogether.

Buri didn’t regret leaving, not after that brief glorious moment of imagining. Better by far to go to Tortall, and see what kind of a people made a woman like Alanna, and a court like King Roald’s. When the Lioness returned with the Dominion Jewel no one would gainsay her right to bear a shield.

Even now, the inn was beginning to fill up, word getting out even in the terrible weather that the Lioness had gone to the Roof of the World, and thrown down the God who waited there. The snows lifted slowly, almost as slowly as Alanna’s health returned. She was desperate to leave long before she was ready, and they all took their turns sitting on the Lioness, making sure she didn’t over tax herself.

No. Better by far that they all go to Tortall when the time came. Alanna’s building urgency, insisting they had to be moving, had to get back, was contagious, and somehow, even though no one had really talked about it they all knew what they would decide. So. On to Tortall, with a heroine. Surely they would be welcomed with the Lioness, the bearer of the Dominion Jewel? Perhaps there, Thayet would find a place, and Buri beside her. Women warriors all.

And if that meant occasionally helping the Lioness out in her quests and battles, Buri thought with a secret glee, so much the better.


End file.
